The Poet as Everyman:

                      A Manifesto



                           1


The modern poet craves pardon, to prevent the perception of offense,
As a politician with his desire for power and balanced image, to merely 
   be unconventional, to turn to the reverse of conformity. 
Let us, we poets, turn instead and sing aloud our verses, ignoring the 
   implores of the offended or the easily breached, for the observance 
   of norms and mores are not our primacy.

I give to us, therefore, this Manifesto,
These words and verses to pour forth our souls, to no longer be obscured 
   in the mythology of scholarship and ill-penned foolishness,
To cease to revel in the faux-nihilist illusions, wrapped in postmodern 
   meaninglessness and lack of vision,
To sing with anger or love again.
To lash out or take in as we will, to directly touch Humanity again,
To no longer clothe our words and conceal our secrets,
To lift and move beyond ourselves, to become selfless,
To know God again, to see His mind,
To take up swords or boats as we will, our wars and travels to again 
   become our rightful travails.

For, truly, we are the voyagers, the seekers of lands,
The righters of unrighteousness, the Puritans in Babylon,
The shakers of traditions, the makers of legacy,
The scoffing in the reverence, the singers of hymns.

We must become, again, ourselves,
We must know our minds and throw off the untruths of established 
   obscurity and decadent post-literacy,
We must, again, sing of bodies electric and bodies planetary,
To save the souls of our worlds, the blinded minds of our realms and 
   lost-wandering generations,

To again be the shapers and the blessed, vessels of deliberate beauty.



                           2


To throw to the swirling dust-winds the empty shroud of symbolic hiding, 
   to reveal rather than to conceal,
To state our purposes and visions with all clarity,
The poet is charged with purity of sight and communication.

Sing, yes, with many layers and colored lights and hues,
Sing, yes, with complexity, with interwoven depths and ends,
But sing a melody over the harmony, for the song is naught without it, 
   and men will no more listen to the song which sounds like foolishness 
   and random sounds.

The topmost level of our poetry must speak with a loud, clear voice, for 
   we are singing to the whole of Earth,
We sing not only for ourselves, nor only for the other singers, but for all 
   mankind, for his benefit and understanding, 
And mankind desires to know the song as we do, but in his own heart, no 
   matter his knowledge of the music's form or the singer.
Sing not for the scholar only, but also for the child.




                           3


Speak to me your mind's heart and the intellect of your emotion, for they 
   are kindred one to another,
Speak to me your own voice, for it cannot be heard within this facade of 
   value neutrality, it cannot be distinguished within the great 
   equalization of levelling which we are foolishly calling enlightenment.

Teach us, our children speak, teach us of the goodness and purity for which 
   we long and have utmost need,
Teach us of your own childhood and of the integrity which you learned,
Teach us your God, that we may see Him and know Him,
Teach us what is better, for you are neither condoning nor condemning, 
   your counsel is not counselling,
We grasp for the example of your lives, the leading which imparts the 
   imprint of what is righteous and whole.

Who are we to judge? you ask of me,
I say instead, Who are we not to judge?
Who are we not to say what is good and best, to say that honesty and the 
   work of an honest man are better than the life of a thief and liar?
Who are we to say that the graffiti of profanity is the same as the 
   playwright's profundity?
Who are we to say that we are ready to dispense with all belief in 
   values, in the better of two lives, of two books, of two deeds,
   that we may know them and teach them to our children?
Who are we not to say that there are judgments and standards, that there 
   are things which impart greatness, that there is greatness?

Who are we poets not to believe?




                          4


We are become a people detached, rushing to a retreat from the comradely,
   a refusing of the connected,
We are become a people reserved for ourselves, a race which bleeds for no 
   one and licks the blood from our own sleeves,
We are a culture of introspection, yet lacking in understanding of even 
   ourselves,
Denying the breath and blood before us,
Denying even the light in eyes across a table before us.

See me and rise, 
Rise, pursuing touch with an outstretched hand and pursuing with 
   outstretched fingers, 
See me and look at my eyes and mouth.

For the reason is simple, for touch is a thing of ease,
For I am here, and you also are here.




                          5


We have lost our histories, we have forgotten the poets before us, 
   forgotten the great men and the great women and our passion for what 
   once was our culture and our understanding of culture,
I sit here in this university and see what may yet be, what may yet come 
   to be.

I and we know of those before, those who learned and taught before us,
Those who touched these same trees and trod upon these same bricks, 
   leaving footprints and leaving no footprints,
Their faces reside in books and their faces are next to me, they have 
   written before and polished their words, they again stumble through
   their rhetoric and language,
They are learned and new-filling with knowledge, writing and reading, 
   communing and communicating, the cyclic unended conversation.